#ep. bounty

[rikerxworf]

“I will find him. I will bring William Riker home. And fearful be the god or man or beast that stands in my way.”

Worfriker nation how are we doing on this fine Thursday;;;;

[christakisbang]

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

I think what makes rogue work so well is that 15 is so established as a heart on his sleeve kind of character by now that that of course he can fall in love with the grumpy nerdy bounty hunter in just one night

[beaulesbian]

love these matching zolu wanted posters, in both versions, and can't wait to see them in opla

[whatsfourteenupto]

Okay okay okay this is 100% my fav episode of the season so far that was so much fun oh my god I’m bouncing off the walls rn what a BOP

[khaliarart]

What do you mean there is canon storyboards of the Announcer?

Was I just supposed to find that out myself??

[rizzlegukgak]

small moment from early on in campaign one of naddpod, but jake goes to make a roll and says to himself quietly “get your head in the game” before stopping and saying “actually no get your head OUT of the game hurwitz, you’re HARDWON FUCKING SUREFOOT” and it just gives me chills to hear

[crocodilenjoyer]

the straw hats are collectively worth over 8.8 billion holy shit. the government is frothing at the mouth over wano they fucking hate them

[bronzetomatoes]

UGHHH 😩😩

[tngpolycule]

Outfit for fleamarket :)

[jewishcissiekj]

Idk I think the most showing thing about the way people wrote Legends Asajj vs. Canon Asajj is the quote at the beginning of their Wookiepedia pages

Both devestate me in different ways and the difference is striking (1st's Legends, 2nd's Canon btw)

[rikerxworf]

— STAR TREK: PICARD — Worf and Will in 3.06 “The Bounty”

ID in alt text

[heartvisor]

hehe :)c

[tuiyla]

So apart from seeing Leighton in more in calc, killing it with her maths genius, the thing I most want from her in season 2 is an exploration of what it means to leave her “old’ life behind. We saw in season 1 how terrified she was of things changing if she came out; she knew perfectly well how her life would inevitably change if people knew the truth. With the encouragement of Kimberly and eventually her other friends, she’s now out on campus and living her best hoe life, but as sudden as that change of pace felt I don’t mind it precisely because I think she’s still very much in the process of fully accepting the way things are going to be different. At least I hope the season is going where I think it is.

Case in point: she’s not yet out to her family. We know from the conversation she has with her dad in the car that she didn’t tell them over Thanksgiving and she shows no intention of leaving this campus bubble she’s created. Leighton being out on campus is a great step but anyone who’s had to come out about some aspect of their identity knows that coming out isn’t a single step. It’s a process you don’t ever really stop doing and now with Leighton’s life being divided into two, college and back home with her family, she’s in the “halfway there” stage in terms of telling the most important people. But she’s not showing any signs of wanting to tell her family.

To be clear, I don’t fault Leighton at all here. She’s very freshly out to her friends and the campus itself and is just enjoying not having to hide and fuck suburban moms in secret. But I think it’s interesting to think of what direction Leighton and her relationship with the Murrays might be leading into, particularly now that she’s successfully made it into Kappa. That’s right, I’ve been leading up to the sorority question all along. I believe Kappa will play a major part in Leighton facing her remaining demons and coming out to her family. I come to this conclusion because Kappa so far has been emblematic of Leighton’s aspirations and the perfect New England family the Murrays have envisioned. We saw early on in season 1 how intense Leighton was about rushing Kappa but here in season 2 we find out that her mom was a Kappa, too. And, in light of Nico’s expulsion and the subsequent dent in the great Essex Murray family dream, Leighton is even more hell bent on making it to Kappa, explicitly because it will please her mom. Though she’d expressed interest in Kappa long before this, I’m taking the liberty to infer it’s always been about her mom and more generally the Murray family’s ideals.

We’ve only seen the whole Murray family interact briefly in the Parents’ Weekend episode, and within that the brief but all the more impactful one-on-one scene between Leighton and her mother. In that scene, a lot is implied about Mrs. Murray and their relationship, too much to really dive into in this post. What’s important is that we see Leighton joke about her mother’s “quirks” and take it back immediately, and in turn her mother comparing the two of them with the sort of contempt reserved for rich housewives of dysfunctional families and their only daughters. Come season 2 and Leighton has her mother in her phone as “The Babadook” and yet admits that the rush means so much to her because it’s a way to appease the Babadook herself. And, like I said, a way to play into the Murray family ideal.

Going back to the point of this post which is Leighton’s coming out, I think this now explicit connection between making it into Kappa and trying to live up to Murry family expectations doesn’t bode well for Leighton. I say that because both episodes, in season 1 and now in season 2 that dealt with her intensity about Kappa have shown Leighton turn into a worse version of herself. In this latest episode it was of course her being a total bitch to Natalie; more generally to everyone she’s hooked up with recently because she failed to inform them about her chlamydia, but Natalie especially. So concerned with Kappa and a successful rush, Leighton completely disregarded Natalie as not only a past partner but as a person. And though the public shaming that came her way was probably enough of a comeuppance for Leighton, she still ultimately gets Kappa. After all, isn’t that what she was so preoccupied with even at the KissMass party? Not so much the public shaming of it all or even that her sexual encounters with women are now public knowledge, but how it affected her chances at Kappa specifically.

I did find that curious, that lack of concern with the lesbianism of it all. Not because I think we need Leighton to still be cautious about her queerness on campus and at Kappa, but because season 1′s sorority episode also saw her lose sight of everything else in favour of this ultimate Kappa goal. I’m of course talking about the fact that, because of the conversation(s) she had at Kappa, Leighton gave in to comphet and went on that date with Cory, even having sex with him despite herself. A true low point for her in season 1, now here she is in season 2, now out to the campus but still giving into the sorority dream and giving her own best self up in the process. Sure, Leighton is more so her authentic self now but we’ve seen how the promise of Kappa compromises her character. The influence that Kappa and Quinn have had on her so far is decidedly bad - maybe inadvertently so but by playing into archaic notions that the very essence of Greek life is built on, also inevitably so. Side note: the Kappa head bitch is called Quinn, really? Driving me mad on purpose.

All this to say, now that Leighton is a Kappa and she can tell her family and make them happy in the process, I think it will only lead to her having to confront the very issue she was sobbing to Kimberly about at the end of last season. Kappa is the representation of the Murray’s perfect Essex family ideal, incredibly fragile after Nico’s fall from grace. It’s the representation of the life Leighton always thought she’d have, the one she should have and the one she not so long ago in season 1 thought she could only get by playing into heteronormativity and repressing her true self. Leighton’s still very much terrified of things changing, just like she told Kimberly, and she’ll be realizing that soon enough. There’s no way she can have her Kappa life and present this straight front to her parents while also now having a taste of what being out feels like. I simply don’t believe that after that low point in season 1 being so closely tied with Kappa, that after emphasizing her mother’s connection with the sorority so much and after seeing what it all brings out Leighton, after all this Kappa won’t play a role in Leighton eventually coming out to her family.

This is all speculation at this point but I think Leighton is bound to make a few more mistakes as a result of her devotion to Kappa before she sees this house of cards crumble and is forced to realize that all this is part of the life she doesn’t want to have anymore. I definitely think it will take time before she’s ready to be out to her family and therefore rid of the expectations the Murrays may want but she doesn’t, but I think it will come eventually. The arc I see for her right now is doing the Kappa thing, going too far, getting called out by her roommates, having a mini-crisis about what it is she really wants and realizing that it’s not Kappa. It’s not what her parents expect of her and it’s not the life she was once so terrified of losing by being different. Nico being gone from Essex adds extra pressure on her to make her parents happy but that will just make this story all the more interesting. And I realize that there’s only so much the remaining six episodes can do, especially with all the three other main girls having their own things going on. Kimberly with her financial problems and looking for solutions, Bela with The Foxy, and Whitney on her self-discovery journey both in terms of academics and relationships. In this sense, I think the season so far has given Leighton the loosest storyline so far, but because of everything I’ve written in this post I believe that will focus on the Kappa journey and an eventual coming out to her family. Building on what these four episodes have established and this last one in particular is the only way to give Leighton a tight storyline this season.

In my opinion, anyway. But I’m just a very recent fan who spends too much time thinking about fictional lesbians and not a TV writer, so who knows. I just had this thought of Kappa being the key, first in a negative then positive way after rewatching the latest episode and remembering the sorority’s role in Leighton’s season 1 arc. Now that the show has looped it back to Mrs. Murray and rushing being something Leighton does for external validation reasons, I just can’t see it going well and can’t see it not tying into her ongoing coming out process.

[benoitblanc]

the alien bounty hunter is kind of an incredible character because he's just so cartoonish and it's so funny. the smoking man has his whole god complex thing, krycek needs to be morally ambiguous to keep up the whole homoerotic deal he's got going on with mulder, the syndicate are all a bunch of ineffectual old men, but the alien bounty hunter has one job and that job is to fuck up mulder and scully as much as possible. and by god he's going to fucking do it

[kingdomoftyto]

...Okay well damn, season 2 is way better than 1 was. I'm actually getting kind of invested now